25 Great Voice Actors from the “Classic Era” of Disney Animated Movies (1937–1977)

I spent most of my childhood living overseas in Europe and Middle East. As a general rule, we didn’t have many options in terms of English-language television and current movies — this was the 90s, so digital streaming was not really a thing yet. As a result, I watched old movies, mostly the same 15 or so movies that my parents owned. It was mostly Disney movies and a few other random ones. But the Disney movies we owned were all classic Disney — not the most popular Disney of the time. The ones we owned were the ones that preceded Disney’s big revival in the late 80s and early 90s spurred by hits like The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), and The Lion King (1994). Those hits were huge when I was a kid, but I just wasn’t into them because we didn’t own them and we didn’t have normal TV.

So the Disney voices and animation styles that I most enjoyed and that I got really used to growing up were from what I would consider the “classic era” of feature-length Disney animation. I know that’s a somewhat arbitrary designation that encompasses various styles and periods. But it’s useful for me just the same. It’s an era that extends from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 and through to The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and The Rescuers in 1977. For context, here are the major feature-length majority-animated films that Disney released during that period:

• Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)